:: CALL :: From CALL to IMI :: Primary EFL Teaching :: A Project ::

Interactive Multimedia Instruction (IMI) in the Primary EFL Teaching: a Project

The following piece of project focuses on the concept that multimedia computers, with the numerous software application now on the market, can help teachers to develop student's linguistic and metacognitive skills in an integrated manner.
The foreign language curriculum in Italian Primary school is designed to familiarize students with the English language as a means of communication and to develop in them an awareness and appreciation of the culture in which it functions.
Concretely, pupils from seven to eleven years of age, are expected to acquire an appropriate level of awareness in understanding and producing coherent spoken discourse in the target language about topics of interest. Such awareness is to be considered as the ability to apply linguistic knowledge and communicative strategies to express and comprehend certain functions about certain content to a certain degree of accuracy, not primarily as mastery of appropriate sets of words and grammatical structures.
As far as we know that a powerful key to developing another language undrestanding is engaged exposure to a language input, the learning process should provide such an input through contextual clues and through the expliotation of learner's linguistic and real-world knowledge, but which goes beyond their current level of competence in that language, thus extending the range of this competence. Such input typically comes from the teacher, textbook readings and audio tapes. Acquisition of the receptive skills -listening and reading- is a prerequisite to development of the productive skills -speaking and writing.

The innovations that have been implemented in Primary Italian EFL curriculum are designed to improve pupils' listening comprehension, writing, and speaking skills in English.
Computer-based innovations provide classwork in the form of frequent, individually-paced exposure to comprehensible input based either on authentic edutainment programs, or on self-organised hypermedia.
Through IMI techniques, the learner's understanding of the authentic input is focused by games and practical tasks. These tasks address the learner's level with on-line aids to comprehension. Guided practice with the vocabulary and structures of each session not only reinforces skills, it also models effective strategies for understanding and retaining information communicated in a language which one is learning
Finally, the link between comprehension and production is established through pre- and postactivities for each lesson which lead to classroom speaking activities and discussions.

The computer-based lessons that have been planned and developed using IMI techniques, complement classroom instruction by building interactive use of English through games and navigation into english-speaking multimedia environments.
Follows an outline of the procedure actually followed by a sperimental team I am leading, to implement IMI in the Primary schools in Navelli (AQ)- Italy, and aiming to produce hypermedia that could suit perfectly our student's needs:

Procedure:
Scannerize a picture taken from a Primary EFL coursebook, and build an hypertext on it, by adding hot pictures linked to contextualized utterances.
Let children interact with this hypertext: firstly understanding the context, and reaching then the productive phase.
To develop oral understanding we can program interactive games, for example "Mix and match" pictures with the voices and "Click and Link" activated by clicking on pictures that are linked to the words children listen from the computer.
Oral production can be fostered through recording children's voice and comparing their utterances with the sounds coming from the computer: this is the one of the best ways to let children reach a consistent level of accuracy without getting bored.
Hot points and pictures can be arranged to link each single picture to speech bubbles, that work as a read-along text: written understanding can be exercised in a playful and menaningful interactive context.
Once exploited the written understanding, children can go further toward the production of simple texts by unscrambling given sentences before, by filling in gaps then, and lastly by writing down freer speech bubbles.

This solution offers significant advantages over every alternative considered for beginning and intermediate language learners and above all for Primary age-range children:
1- IMI permits individual pacing of the presentation of material and tailoring of that presentation to learners' needs and interests.
2- It motivates the integrated use of the linguistc skills with an ongoing series of tasks equipped with a safety net of supporting materials.
3-Finally, the computer is a patient tutor: it demands learners' involvement in the lesson tasks before proceeding and persists until they have mastered the essential points. Pupils can exercise their metacognitive skills.

IMI, moreover, offers an unbeatable source of creative inputs to teachers. The use of technology in the classroom should not make the teacher's job more difficult, it should make it more productive. It should allow them to share information more freely with students and teaching peers. IMI can allow teachers to transform themselves from being repositories of knowledge to being guides and collaborators with students as they navigate through almost limitless resources of information. Instead of reciting lessons, they can facilitate students gathering and organizing information, evaluating it, and deciding how to apply it.

More and more voices in the education and technology literature are acknowledging that it is not computers per se that can be beneficial or harmful, but the use we put them to. Indeed, the newest technologies can be made to serve the most traditional pedagogies, and the philosophies of language teachers can shape the uses of technology within the language curriculum.

:: CALL :: From CALL to IMI :: Primary EFL Teaching :: A Project ::